>>KIL GAL TSEETKIS – CHEYENNE MORGAN (GITXSAN): When I think about the Northwest Coast I always
think about the diversity in cultures, in governance structures, in languages.
A lot of people think it’s kind of all the same culture up here, totem poles and canoes
and it’s extremely diverse.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY (HAÍⱢZAQV): I think the history of the West Coast First
Nations is long and complicated and there’s a lot more to our history than what you would
read in a book.
[SINGING]
>>KEIXÉ YAXTÍ – MAKA MONTURE PÄKI (TLINGIT): And I feel fortunate the I grew up in a culture
where a woman’s voice was inherent and their power was inherent.
>>DAXOOTSU – JUDITH RAMOS (TLINGIT): So we’re very much a very strong matrilineal-based
culture, so we convey our lineage on to our children.
>>SM ŁOODM 'NÜÜSM – DR. MIQUE’L DANGELI (TSIMSHIAN): Our way of life as a people and
our people ourselves, we’re born of the land.
It’s a reciprocal, symbiotic relationship that has created our language.
>>ḤAA’YUUPS (NUU-CHAH-NULTH): Kuukwaḥulth, ‘Tlitsaaḥuulth, Na’mint, Tluushtluushuk,
Aḳmaḳuulth.
All of those Mountains have names.
We have songs, we have personal names that come from those places.
We have ceremonies that have to do with those places.
>>SNXAKILA – CLYDE TALLIO (NUXALK): They say when the First Ancestors came down from
the upper world, they learnt the land and they began to prosper.
They prospered so much that their houses became stacked with goods. Many of those goods would
spoil before they could be used. It was being wasteful.
And so the Creator, He spoke to all the people. He said to Lhlm.
He said, “Invite your neighbors from far and near. Invite them to your house. Feast
them.
Share your wealth with them.
Tell your stories on how I put you here,” the Creator said.
And that’s the origin of potlatch.
The entire coast practices potlatch.
>>NIIS BUPTS’AAN – DAVID BOXLEY (TSIMSHIAN): Well, for one thing, it was the hub of our
social and political wheel.
>> PUT’LADI – KERRI DICK (HAIDA KWAGU’Ł): It’s our identity. It’s how we named our
children. It’s how we married. It’s how we buried people.
That’s how we passed our lineage on. That’s how we passed our dances on.
>>KAA-HOO-UTCH – GARFIELD GEORGE (TLINGIT): Because, you know, our songs are not generic,
they’re history songs. The main events that happened to us became songs.
>>CHIEF GA’LASTAWIKW – TREVOR ISAAC (KWAKWAKA’WAKW): During a potlatch, you invite guests who you
then pay as witnesses.
By them accepting the gift, they’re agreeing to remember everything that has happened during
that ceremony.
>>CHIEF 7IDANsuu JAMES HART (HAIDA): So there is deep history, roots here with family and
clan and stuff, because this is our lands. We didn’t come here from somewhere else,
you know, and this is it.
>>CHIEF IAN CAMPBELL – SEKYU SIYAM (SQUAMISH): I would say that the early settlers arrived
in the idea of Doctrine of Discovery, or terra nullius, that this is a free and vacant land
to be claimed.
>>SECƏLENƏΧʷ – MORGAN GUERIN (MUSQUEAM): The first time European faces saw who we were
in the late 1700s here in my territory, we had already been decimated in numbers, and
we hadn’t even seen the second wave of smallpox yet.
>>CHIEF 7IDANsuu JAMES HART: We had villages all around the lands here, all around the
shores. What kept us here is the food, lots of sea foods, and bountiful that way, you
know, and through time, we learned how to farm the seas and so we wouldn’t overtake.
>>LIHL KA JAAD KINAS CANDACE WEIR-WHITE (HAIDA): One of our Elders, one of our late Elders,
he said if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us.
>>GwaaGanad DIANE BROWN (HAIDA): We are so tied into the land. That’s what makes us
different.
>>SECƏLENƏΧʷ – MORGAN GUERIN: Wherever there was a First Nation, we’re always living
with Mother Earth, and we’re always around those hubs of resources.
Of course, those same things were then considered a commodity by our settlers moving and living
with us.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY: And so when they came in, they came in with a
whole different mindset on resource use and resource extraction.
It was based on a similar sort of thing that we see in this day and age, where more is
better.
>>ḤAA’YUUPS: And when I was a boy, we saw fish in numbers people can't even imagine
today. In my lifetime I’ve seen that change.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY: Well I mean you look at the first nations people
on the coast and the way we all manage the salmon systems for at least 14,000 years,
we never had a crash.
And so when you look at how salmon has been harvested over the last 40 or 50 years managed
by the government, we don't have any more salmon.
And we're salmon people.
>>ḤAA’YUUPS: The forest of this island I said, somewhere upwards of 90% has been
logged.
So it's been denuded.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY: But there was a point in time where the government
mandated everybody to have a hand-log license.
You had to be on the voters list to be able to get a hand-log license, and Indians weren't
allowed to vote, so our people weren't allowed to log, weren't allowed to take trees from
our own territory.
>>CHIEF IAN CAMPBELL – SEKYU SIYAM: So this great distortion to marginalize and oppress
Indigenous peoples through legislative oppression directly stems from this “gold rush” mentality,
the modus operandi for others to become affluent at Indigenous peoples’ expense.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY: Yeah, systemic racism has been present here amongst
all the coastal tribes since the first contact with the white people. It's persisted right
into the current moment that we're having this conversation.
>>SM ŁOODM 'NÜÜSM – DR. MIQUE’L DANGELI: So from 1884 to 1951, our cultural practices
on the Northwest Coast were criminalized through a law called the Potlatch Ban.
>>SNXAKILA – CLYDE TALLIO: So if anyone, a chief was to give gifts to the people, he
was to support his people in any way, that staltmc could be put in jail.
>>SGaan KWAHAGANG JAMES D. MCGUIRE (HAIDA): Having this tattoo on my hand was illegal.
These were acts of savagery, having long hair, speaking your language.
>>GwaaGanad DIANE BROWN: So we kept our chiefs by having underground namings and potlatches.
Mainly that.
>>SM ŁOODM 'NÜÜSM – DR. MIQUE’L DANGELI: 1951 is when that law was dropped, and that's
not very long ago. That's within my… my mom was born before 1951.
>>CHIEF WÍGVIŁBA-WÁKAS – HARVEY HUMCHITT (HAIŁZAQV): They installed fear into our
people. I guess that's how they managed to apprehend or take young kids away from their
homes and put them into residential schools.
>>GOOTHL TS’IMILX – MIKE DANGELI (NISGA’A, TSETSAUT, TSIMSHIAN, TLINGIT): So my grandfather
was lured by an Indian agent, lured on a boat with candy and sent to Coqualeetza in Chilliwack.
Like his family didn't know where the heck he was.
>> PUT’LADI – KERRI DICK: If you tried to go get your children, if you tried to keep
them away, you were thrown in jail just as quickly as anybody who potlatched.
>>KWANKWANXWALIGEDZI – WAKAS | ROBERT JOSEPH, HEREDITARY CHIEF (GWAWA’ENUXW): The most
hurtful, damaging result of residential schools was dehumanizing little, little kids.
>>ḤAA’YUUPS: And certainly our last two centuries of experience in this country has
been massively affected by their racism.
>>JISGANG NIKA COLLISON (HAIDA): Western people, settlers, they don't need to be afraid to
look back. They need to look back just to understand the history, understand what modern
North America is built upon, hey?
So many ways we survived, and also by not giving up our lands or waters, ever.
No one in the colonial world has a record of us giving up our land, because we never
did. It's ours
>>CHIEF IAN CAMPBELL – SEKYU SIYAM: I think to this day, many people still have a preconceived
image that “Oh, there's a reserve somewhere over there on the outskirts of our town,”
and they forget to acknowledge that the entire area that they live in is in our traditional
territory, and that we've been marginalized onto the these reserves through colonialism.
>> PUT’LADI – KERRI DICK: Nothing in this world can deplete who you are.
They stopped us from speaking. They took our children away. They stopped us from potlatching,
and yet we still potlatch. We still sing.
We still teach our children how to speak, and there's nothing in this world that was
going to stop us from being who we are.
>>KIL GAL TSEETKIS – CHEYENNE MORGAN: My daughter's name is Skiltuu, and before she
was born, I made a commitment that I would be speaking Sm’algyax to her as much as
possible.
>>SKILTUU BULPITT (GITXSAN – HAIDA): [Speaking Sm’algyax] Chiefs…matriarchs…and noble
descendants. My heart is very full…when I use Sm’algyax. I thank all the chiefs.
That is all.
>>KIL GAL TSEETKIS – CHEYENNE MORGAN: When I see my daughter speaking Sm’algyax, I
feel so full, lits’eex goot’t, your heart is just so full.
>>XSIM GANAA’W – LAUREL SMITH WILSON (GITXSAN): We're a living culture. This is not a history
that once was, that somehow faded away never to be heard of other than in museum spaces.
>>SECƏLENƏΧʷ – MORGAN GUERIN: We are not going anywhere. Nor should we have to.
Never again will we not be proud of who we are.
>>DÚQVA̓ÍSḶA – WILLIAM HOUSTY: My generation is the first generation in our community that
can walk into this building, participate in a potlatch, and not have to worry about anything.
My mother's generation, my grandfather's generation, the ones before them couldn't do it. Weren't
allowed.
But I could walk in here free. My kids could walk in here free.
And now, with what's left from the older generations, we're learning, we're building, we're instilling
those customs back into the younger generations through language, through traditional ceremonies,
and one day if we continue to do that, we'll be right back where we were when we were tens
of thousands of Hailtzsuk people
using our language on everyday basis, practicing our culture freely, not worrying about who's
going to walk through those doors and tell us we can't do it. Those days are gone.